“It started as a speculative story in a Sunday newspaper and ended up as another skirmish in a culture war—which filled front pages, prompted calls to defund the BBC, and saw the prime minister wade in on the best way to deal with Britain’s colonial history,” write Jim Waterson and Lanre Bakare in Tuesday’s (8/25) Guardian (U.K.). “Yet despite 48-hours of fuss and fury, viewers watching this year’s Last Night of the Proms will still hear both Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope and Glory, played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The only difference is that … for this year only … viewers will hear both works performed as instrumental pieces for the first time since 1905…. The row was prompted by a report in the Sunday Times that Rule, Britannia! and Land of Hope And Glory could be dropped completely from the lineup of the annual classical music event, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests because of concerns about their strong association with imperialism and the lyric ‘Britons never shall be slaves.’ … There may yet be more to come … which says something about the Last Night of the Proms’ … symbolic place … in the cultural calendar.”
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